'BURGLAR' LATEST CRIMINAL WASTE OF GOLDBERG

Whoopi Goldberg puts on a gray wig, padding for her rear end and a maid's uniform for the first scene in her new action comedy Burglar. The clever disguise works. She is able to rob a California mansion of jewels and a rare, valuable stamp, even though she comes face to face with the owner, back too early from jogging. On the doorstep, all she has to do is get hysterical and pretend she saw the robber flee through the bushes.

This is as funny as Burglar gets, unfortunately, at least when Goldberg is on-screen. But the fault isn't hers so much as the filmmakers who under- utilize her. Considering the brilliance of her one-woman Broadway show, it's a shame that someone in Hollywood can't craft a screenplay that takes into account her genius for mimicry and her unique perspective on the world. Maybe Goldberg needs to write it for herself.

She is like no one else working today more than Eddie Murphy, another wildly inventive comic personality. We haven't seen his best screen work yet and the same can be said of Goldberg.

The screenplay is decidedly limiting. In Burglar she is Bernice Rhodenbarr, a savvy ex-con and bookstore owner in San Francisco. Blackmailed by a crooked ex-cop (G.W. Bailey) and implicated in the murder of a playboy she never met, Bernie is in trouble. It's up to her to solve the crime before the police find her. That entails a lot of running around, theft and jive-talking as she follows the golden rule of bamboozling - fool others before they fool you.

Something could be made of the fact that Bernie's greed as a thief almost gets her caught, twice. Instead, the story loses her a little and gets needlessly complex.

Lesley Ann Warren plays a bitchy dentist-divorcee who implicates Bernie in a plot to retrieve her jewelry from her playboy ex-husband. She throws tantrums and swears a lot. Bernie can hold her own when men start to pummel her. But chances are these unsavory images of women are not what feminists had in mind when they hoped for strong female roles on-screen.

It's inexplicable why the biggest laugh lines are given to a supporting player, even one as weird and loony as comedian Bob Goldthwait. He plays Carl, Bernie's best friend and a meek helpmate. With an indescribable roar of a voice, his delivery is everything. Nerds in the audience can take heart in the way he inadvertently manages to turn off the women in a singles bar.

Director-co-writer Hugh Wilson (Police Academy ) has a manic touch. He never lights for long on anything. There are a few spicy bits in Burglar, but mainly this unrewarding film is out to steal your money and your time.

2 STARS

A female cat burglar investigates a murder in which she is the chief suspect.